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Thursday, October 1, 2009

The Profundity of John Green

When I was in middle school and high school, I had a great, good friend named Kathryn. She died, way too young, and I've always had a hard time dealing with it. You see, we'd had a bit of a falling out. Nothing major, just two young people who were at different life stages, just out of sync. I thought we'd have time to fix it but as it turns out, we didn't. I lost her and learned a bitter lesson.

Now, along comes John Green with his Tayshas Award-winning novel, Looking for Alaska. There's a lot to admire in this novel but for me the line that resonates is this:

"We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations....So I know that she forgives me, just as I forgive her. Thomas Edison's last words were: 'It's very beautiful over there.' I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful."